This invention relates to a mechanism for accumulating individual bales of hay or the like from a field where they have been randomly deposited by a baler, building them into compact stacks, and depositing the stacks so formed on a load bed of a trailer or the like for subsequent transport and/or subsequent mechanized handling operations.
Loading and stacking of bales by hand on a trailer or truck is a time-consuming, laborious task and necessitates at least two or three persons to accomplish the loading job and to drive the vehicle involved, be it a towing vehicle for a trailer or the actual truck. Also, it is often necessary that the trailer and truck be stopped at the location of each bale in the field to enable loading thereof. For convenience, the term "wagon" will be used to cover both a trailer and a truck.
Bale pick-up and lifter mechanisms are already known for mounting on, or being pulled alongside, a wagon for picking up bales laying in the field and for lifting the bales above the level of the load bed as the wagon is moved across the field. The stacking of the bales on the load bed still has to be accomplished manually.
Other devices are also known for towing behind a baler to accumulate a group of bales and deposit them in the field for subsequent loading onto a wagon. However, such devices quite often seriously decrease the effective capacity of the baler. This is due, for example, to the fact that the baler and accumulator have to be slowed down at the moment of depositing a stack of bales onto the ground. If this were not done, it could happen that the stack disintegrates. Furthermore, any breakdown of the accumulator results in a delay in the baling operation. Also, quite often the baler with the accumulator therebehind are pulled across the field at a lower speed than the normal or optimum baler speed and this towing operation may damage the baler, as normally the baler is not designed for pulling an additional load. The bale accumulator normally requires a connection to a power source and as the accumulator is pulled behind the baler on the one hand, and as the baler normally has no rear PTO, a lengthy power line has to be provided between the pulling tractor forwardly of the baler and the accumulator. This tends to necessitate a hydraulic power system for the accumulator which is relatively expensive.
The stacks formed by known accumulators are always limited to only two bales as regards height, which means that the stacks comprise a limited number of bales, thereby increasing the time taken for subsequent loading on a wagon. Moreover, the subsequent loading operation still requires additional specialized equipment and manpower. Also, as bales stacked with an accumulator of the type described above are rarely ideally arranged for fast mechanized loading onto a wagon, the bales either have to be restacked onto the wagon by hand, or another piece of specialized loading equipment employed.
Pull-type accumulators of the type referred to above have been disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,139,196 and 3,402,832.
There are also sophisticated, fully automated bale wagons on the market which make the bale loading, stacking and transportation operations a one-man job. Bales are automatically lifted from the ground and arranged in rows. Predetermined numbers of rows of bales are automatically arranged in a layer and successive layers automatically stacked on a load bed to form an orderly arranged stack. The so formed stack often comprises more than one hundred bales and may be unloaded either all at once or bale-by-bale for storage. Such a piece of sophisticated equipment, however, is only economical for a large farm. A fully automated bale wagon of the type described above is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,848,127.
A similar bale wagon is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,517,832 and comprises a sidewardly pivotable load table having bale pick-up means arranged at the forward end thereof. When picking up and depositing bales on the load table of the wagon, the load table necessarily has to be positioned closely adjacent the ground surface so that it may contact the ground from time to time. Furthermore, bales are not positively picked up from the ground and positioned on the load table, whereby bale feeding problems may occur. Also in one arrangement, and dependent on the number of bales already positioned on the load table, subsequent bales have to be picked up at different spacings relative to the load table. This makes the driving of the machine relatively complicated. In another arrangement, all bales are picked up at the outermost end of the load table, whereby drive means have to be provided over the full width of the wagon and of the load table.
Finally, less sophisticated tractor-mounted bale accumulators are known which require less investment and which, therefore, are more appropriate to the small and medium size farms. Such bale accumulators comprise a lifting device for lifting bales from the ground and for feeding them from below into a stacking chamber. Bale-retainer means are provided at the bottom end of the stacking chamber and allow the passage of bales from below in an upward direction, but hold the bales received in the stacking chamber in a raised position once they have been placed in the chamber. Once the stacking chamber is full, other transfer means become operative to transfer the stack of bales towards the wagon load bed in a sideward direction.
This method of operation, especially the method of stacking bales from below and in an upward direction in an upright bale stacking chamber, can give rise to bale-feeding problems. Indeed, it quite often occurs that the bales produced by a given baler are of varying lengths or are tied rather loosely. In both cases feeding problems may occur, and when the bales are loosely tied or when shorter bales have been produced, the bale-retainer means in the bale stacking chamber occasionally may fail to retain in the proper position bales fed into the chamber. When oversize bales are encountered, difficulties may arise in feeding them into the stacking chamber. Thus for the machine to operate properly, all bales should be of a predetermined length and tied firmly but this is virtually impossible to achieve. Furthermore, accumulators of the types described above are relatively complicated and rather expensive. Also, as the stacking chamber is located either above or rearwardly of the bale pick-up means, the stacking chamber is thus positioned at one end of the machine and entirely outside the width of the tractor, even when the machine is in a transport position. Bale accumulators of this type are disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,486,636 and in the German Utility Model No. 75.24.775.